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My experience buying a set of staggered Turbines off TMC and dealings with Tesla SC

I've been off and on in the market for a staggered set of Grey Turbines, and finally was able to snatch some off a forum member, @MTBHXC. This gentleman was great the whole way through in facilitating my staggered set with tires and shipping them nicely wrapped. Again, shout out to @MTBHXC. Great member to do business with.

Service Center Visit

Next I needed these babies scanned to see which TPMS they had, if they still had good voltage, tires remounted and balanced if new ones were needed, then new center caps, lug nuts and lug nut covers; and finally, mounting of the 21"s onto the car. My SC was able to perform all of this, consolidating it all into a 1-stop pleasant experience.

First off, they started by scanning the wheels/ tires to verify which sensors they had. Unfortunately for me, they all were the older type (baodong or whatever). So off they went to have tires dismounted, new Continental TPMS installed, then remounted, balanced, installed on the car with a revised type of lug nut that accepts the black lug nut covers, and my 19" Slipstreams sacked away in Tesla tire totes--all while I BS'd with OAs in the showroom and drank their Keurig for around an hour or so.

Total out-the-door damage came in at $453.90. Itemized, it was:

4 TPMS - $200
20 Lug nuts - $17.60
4 Center Caps (looks like I was only charged for 1) -$5, should've been $20
20 Lug nut caps - $8.00 (.40c each from Tesla, people. Don't be duped into buying ones from a vendor here for a laughable $50 or even cheaper amazon caps at around $12 when you can have the OEMs for $8.)
2 sets of Tesla tire totes (4 total) - $80
Labor - $120
Taxes - $23.30

It also appears they replaced the LH and RH parking brake calipers per that recall while performing the wheel change. This may have been what added the most time to my wait. No problems there.

The main purpose here was to express the good buying experience from a forum member, and the equally fine job Tesla did at making it all a 1-stop walk in the park. I'd like to add that the tire totes are of great quality! They cover the wheel and tire well so you can stack them on top of each other without worry of scratching or gouging adjacent wheels, have carry handles and nice Tesla branding on them. On that note, I didn't feel like the Turbines with tires were that much heavier than the Slipstreams with tires, as I lifted them both up today at different times. I was really expecting the Slips to be much lighter. This is all going by the bicep meter, so take that as you will.

Hope this helps others that may be considering the same thing, and I'm happy to go into detail regarding any of it, including specifics on the invoice.

do they have the grey nut caps? those would be great. Do they come with a tool to remove them?

Click to expand...

Haha, there you go! I just took a screenshot of the photos I had taken on my iPhone and it worked.

As far as I know, they don't offer grey lugnut caps. I think the black looks perfect anyway. And no, no cap removal tool. Would be nice and in hindsight I should've asked if they offer it or what they instead use. Otherwise I'd probably use some end cutting pliers with a good cloth wrapped around the cap.

1. Original cars used a square configuration for 21".
2. P85+ introduced the staggered configuration for 21" (non-performance cars used square config).
3. Shortly after the P85D came out, the staggered configuration was discontinued and all cars were shipped with a square config.
4. Thanks to an intense lobbying campaign from driving enthusiasts, Tesla switched back to staggered 21" wheels - for all models. I believe this is still the case.

4. Thanks to an intense lobbying campaign from driving enthusiasts, Tesla switched back to staggered 21" wheels - for all models. I believe this is still the case.

Click to expand...

When was this switch?

I have zero proof to back this up, but I find it hard to believe that all 21" rims now sold are staggered, even on 75 or 75Ds. Maybe it's the default on 100D and P100D as some people have reported, but every car sold with 21" rims? As I've posted before, staggered rims offer very little to no performance improvement (especially with the current mush suspension on all Model Ss), so to include them on all Model Ss sold with 21" rims seems strange to me. It also puts a significant cost burden on these owners because the field of matching staggered replacement tires is small and expensive (compared to the 21" square setup), and you also can't rotate tires front to back.

Need an opinion from fellow staggered set owners. My fronts are at 7/32" and rears between 5-6/32"--all PS2 tires. Would you grab a set of rear PS2s to accompany the rest of the fronts' usable tread life? Just because the PS2s are discontinued and I don't want to wait until the rears are at 2/32" to start looking for them as they'll become rarer by the day. Then when the fronts are at 2/32" I'll just update to the latest stuff out, be it PSSs, Contis, etc.

I'm thinking the the rears will need replacing when the current fronts are at around 4-5/32". Does that sound right, on average?

Meta

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